Cumulus Presence

Brooks Anderson’s work is, above all, an exploration into the power of Contemporary Landscape painting. Known for his gifted handling of composition, detail, and clarity of light, he evokes in paint the experience of atmosphere and natural phenomena. The beauty of this Northern Californian’s rendering of earth and water is anchored by an extensive formal vocabulary and visual intellect. But it is in his new series of large-scale, spiritually evocative representational paintings that his vision opens up and aspires to majesty: portraying the landscape in a contemporary context—pristine, modern meditations on land, sea, and sky. It’s as if there is a divine structure beneath the surface, an arresting, imminent, riveting and haunting quality (a verisimilitude) to these numinous paintings of the natural world. As he builds up its layers of vibrant, transparent color, Anderson relishes in the act of painting, responding to what is happening on the surface of the work—while simultaneously harnessing an energy to the composition. Brooks dives beneath the surface appearance of his subject matter to discover something irresistibly profound.